Growing your own food: Who Does it, how, and organic or conventional methods?

[SoloWilderness]

For those who grow their own food in addition to hunting for their protein:

I'm interested in seeing what people are doing in higher altitude, and harsher climate conditions in particular. We are in the process of building a large permanent greenhouse for season extending here at 8000' in Colorado. Going to be experimenting with automation and automatic temperature control with venting and propane heat supplementation. Structure will be double wall 8mm polycarbonate, with a second interior layer added once we see how a single layer retains heat in the winter. Going to be using a residential quality door and windows salvaged from a relatives house to ensure a weathertight structure.

Interior will be sealed from the exterior at ground level as well and dug into the ground for additional thermal mass. Utilizing raised beds salvaged from industrial pallet wood, which is where all the framing came from as well (milled square and treated). Rodent and insect screen under the floor, with crushed gravel flooring and a small woodstove eventually.

Growing method will be organic, in soil, with automatic watering, and applications of organic teas on a feeding schedule. Rainwater collection will hopefully supplement the water, which will be gravity fed with pump assist as required from rain barrels located uphill from the structure.

 

[FLATHEAD]

In zone 9A. Long growing seasons.
Grow a few things; Maters, Peppers, Beans, Kale, Carrots, Onions, Arugula,
Cabbage. No chemicals. Worm castings, Neem Oil.
Nothing serious, but I'd be dangerous with a Rototiller.

 

[Pony Soldier]

All I can grow is a limited species of grass and conifers. The growing season is extremely short - like 20 days.

 

[def90]

I try, I only have a 4x8 plot because I live in a condo but I get a few tomatoes, carrots and chile peppers every year.. I have a drip hose and a cheap timer that turns the hose on and off so I pretty much do nothing.


Seriously though. As a kid my dad had probably a 40x40 chunk in our yard back in Minnesota and he grew enough green beans, potatoes, carrots, squash/zuchini, tomatoes and corn to last us (a family of 5) for the most part of the year. He just put the sprinker on it when needed.

A lot of gardening advice will be soil and climate dependent.

 

[def90]

I try, I only have a 4x8 plot because I live in a condo but I get a few tomatoes, carrots and chile peppers every year.. I have a drip hose and a cheap timer tbat turns the hose on and off so I pretty much do nothing.


Seriously though. As a kid my dad had probably a 40x40 chunk in our yard back in Minnesota and he grew enough green beans, potatoes, carrots, squash/zuchini, tomatoes and corn to last us for the most part of the year, he did a lot of canning. He just put the sprinker on it when needed.

A lot of gardening advice will be soil and climate dependent.

 

[Nickofthewoods]

Looks like you're going to have a badass greenhouse! I'm at 7500 ft and built raised beds with covers that can go on over the frames early in the growing season when frosts are still possible. Water is a two 40 gallon rain barrel gravity drip on a twice daily timer. Must be hand watered a lot too though, especially during dry spells. This year we did tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, peas, beans, radishes, cilantro, Serrano peppers, jalapenos, bay leaves, rhubarb, and carrots. It's been a good summer with all the rain we have had. My wife is the real gardener I just designed and built the setup but I would love to have a green house and get more into it one day like you're doing.

 

[JustSomeGuy35]

If you haven't read this book or one like it, I highly recommend that you do. I'm about halfway thru it and have already revised my original greenhouse plans twice.

I've been an avid gardener for the last 12 years. In WV, I had a small orchard and 1/2 acre garden. Sold and traded potatoes to people that lived on the mountain. Made wine out of the fruit and sold it too. I also learned how to grow using hydroponics. I grew tomatoes, sweet peppers, and cantaloupe using DWC tubs.

When I moved to IA, I had 60' x 50' garden. Grew tobacco, tomatoes, beans, everything, etc. Sold the extra produce to the people in my neighborhood. I built a hydro lettuce raft setup in my basement and grew tomatoes and herbs in DWC tubs upstairs during the winter.

After moving to IL, I started a small indoor mushroom farm. Grew about 30-35 lbs of blue and elm oyster mushrooms per week, kept some, and sold the rest to all the restaurants in a nearby town. I shut that business down a couple years ago.

I also built raised beds since the soil here sucks. I gotta say, I hate raised beds! I prefer growing in the ground. We grow a lot of beans, peas, peppers, ground cherries, and tomatillos. I made a 5 x 12' bed out of cherry tree logs and planted asparagus in it and they're doing great!

I also planted a crap ton of fruit trees and bushes. Apples, pie cherries, peaches, plums, pears, goji berries, black and red currants, blueberry, and honeyberry. Raspberries grow wild here so I just cultivate them. All the trees are just now starting to produce crops since they're like 3-5 years old.

 

[Wolf_trapper]

I grow a fair bit to sell. I'm north of pony soldier in a valley about 4300'. Last frost memorial day and first frost about Sept 10th. We grow a lot of tomatoes peppers but a lot of other additional things. I'd get your soil tested to see what you're lacking. You're going to need to grow in a greenhouse or some other structure. I've always wondered how economical it is to heat those for your own food. We start our plants in a 8x10greenhouse but don't use it past last frost. After growing your own food you realize how much poison gets put on store bought produce, herbicides and pesticides, makes me want to avoid eating that as much as possible.

 

[Phaseolus]

After 35 years in agricultural research and participation in many residue trials…you haven’t got nearly as much to worry about as you’ve been told to believe.

BTW, a herbicide is a class of pesticide

 

[JustSomeGuy35]

After 35 years in agricultural research and participation in many residue trials…you haven’t got nearly as much to worry about as you’ve been told to believe.

Could you elaborate on this, please?

 

[hunterjmj]

We are in zone 4 and grow potatoes, onions, tomatoes, beets, turnips, lettuce and carrots.
I've tried book Choy for 2 years and it just bolts on us.
We moved to a new place this year so we're starting over but we have way more room to grow. We typically make tomato sauce and can it each year which will typically last into the next summer. I box up potatoes and they last usually into Jan/feb and the onions stay good till we use them up in spring. We can beets and freeze the rest.
I'm hoping to build a root cellar next summer to keep our vegetables and someday a greenhouse.

 

[SoloWilderness]

Looks like you're going to have a badass greenhouse! I'm at 7500 ft and built raised beds with covers that can go on over the frames early in the growing season when frosts are still possible. Water is a two 40 gallon rain barrel gravity drip on a twice daily timer. Must be hand watered a lot too though, especially during dry spells. This year we did tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, peas, beans, radishes, cilantro, Serrano peppers, jalapenos, bay leaves, rhubarb, and carrots. It's been a good summer with all the rain we have had. My wife is the real gardener I just designed and built the setup but I would love to have a green house and get more into it one day like you're doing. View attachment 453193View attachment 453208

Nice setup! When we lived in Denver that was similar to the setup we used, with a large frame 10'H x 14'w x 80' long that we could pull plastic over to protect from the hail. Grew tomatoes, squash, beans, peas, carrots, beets, pumpkins, herbs, ground cherries, lettuce, spinach, kale, rhubarb, strawberries, potatoes, and planted multiple fruit trees - peaches & apples first planted when we bought the house. Only thing we were sad to see go when we moved to the mountains, our fruit trees were just starting to get really productive.

 

[Rich M]

We did a hydroponic system at home and at our church. Higher maintenance but very fruitful. It prefers tomatoes peppers lettuce and some other stuff like strawberries.

Wife has an aero grow and some grow lights for starting seeds. Get em started then get em in the ground.

Raised beds work well but if you have decent soil and an irrigation system you can grow veggies.

Organic vs store bought. Store bought will produce more but you cant save seeds and plant the next year. Roundup ready has been said to cause cancer.

 

[Phaseolus]

Could you elaborate on this, please?

There is a very lengthy process to register a pesticide before it will be approved for use. It includes taking plant samples at different plant growth stages and from the date of application to maturity. These plant samples are analyzed in a lab for traces (residue) of the pesticide applied (by traces I mean the breakdown parts of the chemical often called metabolites). These residues can sometimes be found in the low parts per billion, or now with better lab methods, parts per trillion. Those are pretty low numbers of residues, lower than you need to worry about. There is a lot more to it than just residue trialing. This also assumes that the ag producers have followed the pre harvest interval determined by testing to have no or extremely low metabolic residues detectable.
Are there issues with pesticide use? Of course there are, too many to add here in this post, just keep in mind that what you have heard is probably no more accurate than media and word of mouth can make it. To the the topic of backyard gardening: I have a large garden, especially for fresh and canned tomatoes, I don’t use pesticides in my garden, just because I don’t need them. I do use fertilizers so I’m not technically “Organic”.

 

[Fjellvei]

Prob not applicable to OP interest but we are 8A - basically can grow anything mediocrely on any given year. We are probably growing half of the vegetables our family eats each year. Lots of improvement to go.

We are big fan of Charles Dowding "no dig" on our 1000sq ft garden. Lots of cardboard up front, great weed management technique. Only tilling is selectively with a broadfork

 

[SoloWilderness]

View attachment 453216

If you haven't read this book or one like it, I highly recommend that you do. I'm about halfway thru it and have already revised my original greenhouse plans twice.

I've been an avid gardener for the last 12 years. In WV, I had a small orchard and 1/2 acre garden. Sold and traded potatoes to people that lived on the mountain. Made wine out of the fruit and sold it too. I also learned how to grow using hydroponics. I grew tomatoes, sweet peppers, and cantaloupe using DWC tubs.

When I moved to IA, I had 60' x 50' garden. Grew tobacco, tomatoes, beans, everything, etc. Sold the extra produce to the people in my neighborhood. I built a hydro lettuce raft setup in my basement and grew tomatoes and herbs in DWC tubs upstairs during the winter.

After moving to IL, I started a small indoor mushroom farm. Grew about 30-35 lbs of blue and elm oyster mushrooms per week, kept some, and sold the rest to all the restaurants in a nearby town. I shut that business down a couple years ago.

I also built raised beds since the soil here sucks. I gotta say, I hate raised beds! I prefer growing in the ground. We grow a lot of beans, peas, peppers, ground cherries, and tomatillos. I made a 5 x 12' bed out of cherry tree logs and planted asparagus in it and they're doing great!

I also planted a crap ton of fruit trees and bushes. Apples, pie cherries, peaches, plums, pears, goji berries, black and red currants, blueberry, and honeyberry. Raspberries grow wild here so I just cultivate them. All the trees are just now starting to produce crops since they're like 3-5 years old.

That looks like a great book, I've seen it, but haven't had a chance to read it. I've been working mostly off the Ortho book shown below, and information from the CSU extension office.

A lot of people up here use geo-domes, which are probably the ideal, with the best of them able to grow some smaller fruit trees, and keep a few things overwintered in them. Those are very expensive, and complex to build, so we decided to go with a traditional structure design. I've used seasonal greenhouses a lot growing up, but they all had aspects that were marginal for the conditions. When we first moved up here, I used a basic kit greenhouse for 2 seasons, which after multiple snow and windstorms, finally collapsed. It was good for primarily weather protection from hail and light snow, but not much else.

The design I settled on was a combination of the snow country and in ground greenhouses the Ortho book, which is a great resource, and a scaled up version of these plans from a builder in BC. I've also been taking the aspects I like of the designs from the really high end commercial greenhouses and incorporating them. There are some really fantastic greenhouses out there if you have a budget of $25k and up... which we did not have. So we have been analyzing all these designs and cherry picking details to use in ours. We will be utilizing solar tanks to retain heat overnight, and are putting in place pipe sleeves under the foundation walls and beds to eventually run a recirculating solar hot water system to heat the soil. Its a go to technique up here, seems to get the beds going at least a month earlier to pre-warm the soil.

Our soil is basically sterile due to a hot wildfire 2006 that scoured everything, there is very little organic matter in the ground, so the raised beds are really the only way to get much to grow. We have basically every species of noxious weed there is up here, so even mixing in the native soil can be a headache due to weed seeds, so we have been bringing in nursery soil and custom blending our own soil mixes with organic supplements to build nutrient content and establish healthy ph levels.

Part of the plan with this is to give our kids a place to start a small business, growing vegetable starts, and maybe selling a little excess produce at the farmers market, to help them develop a business, and learn some basics. The mini farming book has some great ideas for maximizing output per square foot.

 

[SoloWilderness]

We are in zone 4 and grow potatoes, onions, tomatoes, beets, turnips, lettuce and carrots.
I've tried book Choy for 2 years and it just bolts on us.
We moved to a new place this year so we're starting over but we have way more room to grow. We typically make tomato sauce and can it each year which will typically last into the next summer. I box up potatoes and they last usually into Jan/feb and the onions stay good till we use them up in spring. We can beets and freeze the rest.
I'm hoping to build a root cellar next summer to keep our vegetables and someday a greenhouse.

Bolting is tricky, we have been trying to grow brocolli, and it bolts really quickly. I've found that stuff that bolts here, I have to plant late in the year, or in the spring. During summer I've tried shading, with mixed results.

 

[magtech]

Did the math on my garden. If I were to greenhouse it I could get 2 more months of growing season. But the total cost including propane and greenhouse costs would make it a negative net gain, unless I sold my food. I give away 90% for free on a roadside stand. My garden is more for helping those around here.

For me, I just don't see the point in doing it.... best thing would be keeping out the groundhogs. They devasted my garden this year.

 

[doc holiday13]

i do a combination of greenhouse outdoor and organic. this had been the best year yet. key to pest management is flowers.. lots and lots of flowers. lots of flowers brings lots of pollinators and birds. so many birds this year. I haven't sprayed anything either.

timing your planting also key to managing pest. if I detailed everything we did it would take so many paragraphs. so just plant lots of self seeding and perennials flowers and plant vegetables in between

 

[JustSomeGuy35]

That looks like a great book, I've seen it, but haven't had a chance to read it. I've been working mostly off the Ortho book shown below, and information from the CSU extension office.

A lot of people up here use geo-domes, which are probably the ideal, with the best of them able to grow some smaller fruit trees, and keep a few things overwintered in them. Those are very expensive, and complex to build, so we decided to go with a traditional structure design. I've used seasonal greenhouses a lot growing up, but they all had aspects that were marginal for the conditions. When we first moved up here, I used a basic kit greenhouse for 2 seasons, which after multiple snow and windstorms, finally collapsed. It was good for primarily weather protection from hail and light snow, but not much else.

The design I settled on was a combination of the snow country and in ground greenhouses the Ortho book, which is a great resource, and a scaled up version of these plans from a builder in BC. I've also been taking the aspects I like of the designs from the really high end commercial greenhouses and incorporating them. There are some really fantastic greenhouses out there if you have a budget of $25k and up... which we did not have. So we have been analyzing all these designs and cherry picking details to use in ours. We will be utilizing solar tanks to retain heat overnight, and are putting in place pipe sleeves under the foundation walls and beds to eventually run a recirculating solar hot water system to heat the soil. Its a go to technique up here, seems to get the beds going at least a month earlier to pre-warm the soil.

Our soil is basically sterile due to a hot wildfire 2006 that scoured everything, there is very little organic matter in the ground, so the raised beds are really the only way to get much to grow. We have basically every species of noxious weed there is up here, so even mixing in the native soil can be a headache due to weed seeds, so we have been bringing in nursery soil and custom blending our own soil mixes with organic supplements to build nutrient content and establish healthy ph levels.

Part of the plan with this is to give our kids a place to start a small business, growing vegetable starts, and maybe selling a little excess produce at the farmers market, to help them develop a business, and learn some basics. The mini farming book has some great ideas for maximizing output per square foot.

View attachment 453306
View attachment 453307

The first gardening book I ever read was Mini Farming. It's still a great resource even though I've read it, cover to cover, 4 times now.

I had considered building a geo-dome too but passed on it for the same reasons as you. I thought a high tunnel would be nice too and much less expensive but the weeds, prairie grass, critters and wind are just too awful here in NW IL. Now, I am planning on building a greenhouse similar to the middle picture on the cover of the book I posted. It will have only 2.5 sides of polycarbonate since overheating is just as much of an issue here as the cold. Still deciding on size and materials though.

Anyways, it sounds like you have a solid plan and resources to draw from. I really like your solar hot water system idea! I hope everything works out great for you!